


The One Where Jill Doesn't Die Because She Looks in the Backseat of Her Car

by SweetShireBones



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Jill's death made me mad so I fixed it, Not Canon Compliant, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26180404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetShireBones/pseuds/SweetShireBones
Summary: Jill Morgan doesn't expect her Friday afternoon to be interrupted by the one man she's in charge of finding. Of course, working at the Phoenix Foundation, one should always expect the unexpected.(Does basically what it says on the tin)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 17





	The One Where Jill Doesn't Die Because She Looks in the Backseat of Her Car

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot possibly believe that Jill Morgan, a certified genius, would not have noticed Murdoc hiding in the backseat of her car. I check the back of my car every time I get in it and I'm not a government agent in charge of tracking down a psychopath. So, this is my strongly worded letter to canon that ends with Jill alive and well. I've been sitting on this idea since the episode aired (almost two years ago now, wow) so it's high time it made it's way out into the world.

The Los Angeles heat washes over Jill like a wave as she pushes open the doors to the Phoenix Foundation and lets her shoes hit the asphalt. After spending most of her work week holed up in air-conditioned labs or server rooms, the heady warmth assaulting her senses is almost pleasurable. Almost. She’s still unaccustomed to the balmy weather. Even after three years living here, she misses the feeling of an autumn chill in the air and bundling up into a sweater. 

She stops in her tracks, the reminder of home she’d conjured up reminding her that she should text her sister. She does so immediately, despite her position in the middle of the Phoenix staff parking lot, knowing that if she waits, she will forget. At work, she has a single-minded focus on her tasks but as soon as she exits the building her mind wanders. She wonders what the weather is like back home, decides to ask. 

Text sent, she continues walking, sending a glance skyward and smiling at the pure blue sky that greets her. As much as the weather takes getting used to, she does love the near constant blue skies. They make her forget the near constant pressure in her life right now, with this Murdoc task force consuming all her waking thoughts and sometimes making its way into her dreams as well. 

No. She shakes her head, letting her hair fall into her eyes. It’s Friday. She has a whole weekend ahead of her to decompress and let Murdoc make his slimy way out of her head. There’s no point letting him take over her right now. 

As if to make her trip a little longer, her phone chimes with a reply from her sister. Jill leans against the driver’s side door to read it, smiling at the anecdote her sister sent about one of her nieces. Laughing aloud for a moment, she pauses when a wave of homesickness passes over her. If she wasn’t running the Murdoc task force, she’d have gone home for a visit at least twice by now. She hopes, something she finds herself doing more and more often lately, that the perfect opportunity to catch him once and for all will fall into her lap. But she’s an adult, and she knows things take work and magic chances, like what she wishes for when she’s tracking movements that might be figments of her imagination, don’t appear out of thin air. 

Sighing hard enough that the curls around her face rustle, angry that she’s thinking about Murdoc despite her best efforts to put him out of her mind, she pulls open her car door and sits heavily in the driver's seat, turning the key in the ignition as fast as possible to dispel the cloying heat with a hearty blast of air-con. Jill has a very specific routine before she starts to drive, something that not even intrusive thoughts about Murdoc can make her skip. First, she puts her seat belt on. Then, she dials to the radio station she listens to on the way home—different than the one she tunes into on the way to work. Finally, she cranes her head around to look into the backseat. It’s an old habit that she picked up when she first learned to drive, paranoia passed down to her by her mother and older sister. On a normal day, the detritus of a backseat in dire need of a clean would greet her. Today, what she sees elicits a scream. 

He’s here. Murdoc is in her car. 

Frozen to her seat, her vocal cords scrabble for sounds that aren’t forming. She should scream, the part of her brain panic hasn’t overthrown urges her. There are still a couple cars in the lot, someone might hear her. 

“Impressive, Jill.” Murdoc’s voice grates down the back of her neck, the hair on her arms raising in response, “I figured I had until the highway until you noticed me.” 

Jill doesn’t spend time wondering how Murdoc knows she takes the highway home and not surface streets. 

“What do you want, Murdoc?” 

“I feel as though that should be rather obvious, dear. I want you to stop looking for me.” 

His phantom-like appearance in the backseat is unnerving, but not nearly as unnerving as the threat behind Murdoc’s casual, almost flippant, words. He’s going to kill her, of this Jill is intimately aware. However, she realizes that she has a slight upper hand. Murdoc won’t dare kill her in the Phoenix parking lot. He’s done a similar power play in years past, stabbing Bozer and having the building besieged. If she knows anything from more or less stalking this man for over a year, she knows Murdoc hates to repeat himself. He’ll want her to go somewhere off of Phoenix property to finish her off, if she had to guess, to keep his reputation as a ‘creative-type’ in the field of contract killing. Fortunately, she’s in the driver’s seat and, be it the adrenaline giving her false courage or her utter contempt for the man holding her hostage in her own car, she’s decided she’s not moving anywhere. Murdoc can kill her here or not at all. 

He’s appraising her now, expression shifting every millisecond like he’s somehow reading her thoughts in real time. Of course, that’s impossible. Jill lives in the real world—for the most part—and, as of yet, mind reading doesn’t exist unless you’re MacGyver and Jack in the field. 

“I won’t kill you; you know.” 

Now this is a direction Jill hadn’t anticipated. She can’t stop herself from blurting out a surprised, 

“Why?” 

“Oh,” he tosses a gloved hand in the air glibly, “It wouldn’t have that air of sophistication to it now. And I do love a little sophistication. Now it’d be an old-fashioned car murder. Where’s the pizzazz? The panache? No. I only would have killed you if you hadn’t noticed me hiding away back here.” 

“What do you gain, not killing me?” Jill is pushing her luck here, and she knows it. If anything, she’s convincing Murdoc to do the deed and get it over with. But her brain, ever trying to deduce Murdoc’s rationale for what he does and does not do, can’t help but wonder what he’s trying to prove. 

“Oh, I was going to, at first. I had this whole plan. There was going to be a package waiting for him with your cellphone number in it, you were going to answer, I was going to jump out and surprise you, and just like that my best bud is back at the Phoenix, where he belongs.” 

At once, the pieces start to fall into place for Jill. This isn’t about her, at all. Despite her place at the head of the Murdoc task force, he doesn’t perceive her as a threat. Ordinarily, she would find that insulting, but seeing as the alternative gets her killed with one hundred percent certainty, she’ll let the underestimation of her character slide. This is all about Mac. She should have known. Mac has always been Murdoc’s favourite, albeit unwilling, playmate. With him out of the country for so long and Murdoc preferring, from what she knows, to work domestically, he must have been feeling lonely. 

“You know he’s leaving again, right? Mac’s at the airport right now, headed to Nigeria.” 

“Yes, yes. I know all too well how willing MacGyver is to abandon me. Which is why I’ve thought of a better plan that gets him back home, without making him all brooding and melancholy. He’s no fun at all when he’s like that.” 

“How do I fit into your master plan then, Murdoc? You’ve made it clear you’re not killing me. What’s the point of holding me hostage in my own car?” 

“Because, Jill. I need options. I was considering calling MacGyver myself, telling him to quit being despondent over the news about his dear old dad and come back to where he belongs. But he’d never listen to me. I need one of his friends. Someone to really convince him. And, well, you were my easiest mark.” 

“You think Mac will listen to me?” Jill is incredulous. If Jack Dalton himself couldn’t keep Mac from returning to Nigeria then how is she going to pull it off? 

“He’d better. You’ll convince him to come home today. Not in two weeks. Not in a month. Today. No secret flights for more kisses with Nasha. You’ll get him home by the end of the day or you and I are going to have another fun, little, talk. Trust me, if you and I see each other again, it won’t end so prettily for you.” 

There’s the threat she’s expected since their nightmarish exchange began. Of course. This can’t be a simple phone call; her life has to hang in the balance. Whirling with the card she’s just been dealt by her psychopathic nemesis; it takes work to register that she’s being pushed from the driver’s seat by a gloved hand while Murdoc climbs into her space. Ah, of course. He needs a getaway car. 

Standing on the sun-warmed pavement next to her own car, she takes the burner phone Murdoc hands to her without thinking—without breathing--and watches him peel out of the parking lot and drive, ironically, into the sunset. She can’t believe she’s alive. Even with the assurances that he needed her and wasn’t planning on leaving her dead in the driver’s seat, Jill was certain she’d seen her last day on Earth. 

She still has the overwhelming issue of convincing Mac to come back to the Phoenix...Evidently, the continuation of her time above ground is dependent on her success. 

A sudden vibration from the device in her hands sends her jumping clean out of her skin and it’s a full minute before she’s recovered enough of her breath to glance downward at whatever message she’s been sent. 

Chillingly, it’s a simple, two-word, reminder: Clock’s ticking. 

If she’s being honest, she was lying out of her ass when she told Murdoc she had no chance at bringing Mac home. All she needs to do is tell him about Murdoc and she’s ninety-nine percent sure he’ll be here within the hour. It feels selfish though. The poor man finally has a break from his nonstop crusade against the world’s evils and injustices. Is she really going to drag him back just for a killer, that she’s in charge of finding, who’s already in the wind? 

Her fingers have already dialed Mac’s number before she’s decided anything, fear for her own life overtaking any other consideration. Mac picks up on the third ring, undoubtedly thrown from the ‘unknown number’ alert popping on his phone. Jill doesn’t even let him say hello, the events of the last half-hour coming out in a rush that she’s sure is completely incoherent. 

Blessedly, Mac doesn’t interrupt her to ask questions, doesn’t ask her afterwards if she’s sure Murdoc was there. He doesn’t even hesitate on the line before promising he’ll be back at Phoenix as fast as he can—no he doesn’t care that it’s what Murdoc wants—and they’ll sort everything out together. 

“Jill,” he says before hanging up, “You should call Jack, tell him what’s going on. He’ll get to you faster than I can and you shouldn’t be alone right now.” 

It’s solid advice, but Jill doesn’t have the energy left in her to explain the situation over again. It’s all she can do to collapse onto the curb of the parking lot, the adrenaline leaving her now that she’s no longer in immediate danger. Unfortunately, it also means whatever strength or mental clarity she had left disappears along with the excess stress hormone in her system, leaving her struggling to remain calm and not burst into tears. 

By the time the familiar sight of Mac’s burgundy Jeep rumbles into the parking space where her own car used to be, Jill is vaguely sure that she can stand unassisted without her knees turning to gelatin. With some time alone to think, she’s decided she’s had enough of death threats for one day, thank you very much. If Matty doesn’t mind, she muses, she’s going to take a handful of sick days and go far, far, away once this incident report is filed. She needs—no, deserves—a vacation. 

~ 

She’s deciding between Singapore and the South of France, packing a few essentials from her lab station after filing her incident report directly into the hands of Matilda Webber, when there’s a soft knock at the door. Looking up, she sees Mac, Jack, Riley, and Bozer crowding the entryway to her lab, waiting for permission to come in. They must be walking on eggshells around her. No one, especially not Mac, knocks before entering the lab. 

She waves them in and then promptly waves off any attempts at sympathies or concern over her ordeal. As far as she’s concerned, it’s over and done with. She’d rather not talk about it anymore. The Phoenix-employed psychologist who’s in the building twice a week to meet with agents and analysts alike might not call her avoidance measures healthy, but she’s not sure she cares. 

“We know you’re headin’ out on us soon, “Jack says, “but we though you might want to take a look at what we found before you leave.” 

Riley places her laptop in front of Jill. On it, is a compilation of the research Jill has done over the past six months on Murdoc’s many idiosyncrasies. Riley’s taken it a step further. From what Jill can make out, she’s created a program that predicts Murdoc’s most likely new movements from studying his old ones. It’s what Jill wanted to do from the start, but she got shot down by Oversight, something about a waste of resources and personnel. Her face must give away how brilliant she finds what she’s staring at, as Riley smiles from beside her. 

“What Oversight doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” Riley grins and Jill finds herself wishing that she knew the brilliant computer genius back in high school. Her life could have been very different. Although, she isn’t sure how Riley knows that Oversight is a man. She’s heard whispers that Oversight is actually Mac’s dad, but until Mac himself tells her otherwise, she’s not inclined to believe the rumour mill. Mac’s missing dad being under their noses like this the whole time? It’s too much like the soap operas Jill’s mother can’t be pried away from to have any stake in reality. 

“There might be a few wild goose chases...” Jack is concocting a rallying battle speech in from his place leaning against the wall in the corner closest to Jill’s desk, “but since when has that ever stopped us?” 

It’s true. She’s watched the team take on missions with intel much less sound than what’s in front of them. They might not find Murdoc the first time they set out, but there’s a chance they will at some point. What differs in the other low-intel missions the team has been on is that Jill wasn’t leaving. She watches their backs. It’s her job. It doesn’t feel right to send them off alone, letting another analyst take over her role. 

Mac’s looking at her over the computer screen, sizing her up; watching as she lets the fantasy of an airplane taking her far away from Murdoc slip from her mind faster than it came. 

“What do you say, are you with us, Jill?” 

Jill nods, taking the computer from Riley, mind already whirling over how they can authenticate the predictions from the computer algorithm. She’s always been with them. She never could have left.


End file.
